What is Blockchain Gaming?

Blockchain gaming is a growing industry, full of new ideas and strong performance. This year teases big developments in this field, with intricately designed virtual worlds, more advanced game features, and NFT trading than ever before!

Blockchain Gaming: Q2 2023 Data Report from DappRadar

• Investment Growth: Investments in blockchain gaming and metaverse projects soared by 31% from Q1 2023, reaching $973 million.

• Blockchain Growth: Klaytn and Oasys experienced significant increases in daily Unique Active Wallets, with 1067% and 5573% growth respectively.

• Strong Game Performance: Alien Worlds and Splinterlands dominated their respective blockchain platforms in terms of user activity.

• Emerging Strength: Despite setbacks in wallets and trading volumes, the surge in investment activity highlights robust growth potential for blockchain gaming, indicating a positive trajectory for the future.

What is Blockchain Gaming?

Blockchain gaming, also known as web3 gaming, play-to-earn gaming, or crypto gaming, leverages decentralized technologies to create a more equitable and transparent relationship between players and developers. At its core is ownership.

In web2 gaming, assets remain within developer ecosystems. In web3 gaming, assets like characters, XP, weapons, and tokens are owned by players, secured transparently via blockchain. These can be traded or sold across platforms, enabling new revenue streams and P2E models.

How Does It Work?

The Foundation: Web3 Technology

Traditional games rely on centralized servers. Web3 games decentralize ownership and control, giving players agency over their digital assets.

Smart Contracts

Smart contracts act as impartial referees, executing rules automatically. They enable trustless transfers and trades of in-game assets with transparency.

Crypto Wallets & Tradable Treasures

Crypto wallets store in-game assets like characters, tokens, or NFTs. These assets can be traded across games or marketplaces, giving them value beyond a single platform and even in the real world.

What Are the Limitations?

• The Initial Hurdles: Onboarding new players is complicated by wallets, crypto purchases, and steep learning curves.

• Performance & Scalability: Popular chains like Ethereum face congestion, high costs, and slow performance.

• Disconnected Ecosystems: Lack of interoperability forces players to juggle multiple wallets and platforms.

• Balance Between Fun & Finance: Overemphasis on financial incentives can undermine the gaming experience.

Emerging Solutions

Scalability Solutions

L2 advancements improve throughput and cut fees by processing transactions off-chain, later settling on main chains.

Account Abstraction

Account abstraction replaces rigid EOAs with flexible SCAs. With session keys, social logins, and sponsored transactions, onboarding mirrors web2 UX while keeping decentralized benefits intact.

Dynamic In-Game Assets & Gelato

Dynamic NFTs evolve based on real-world events or player stats. Gelato Web3 Functions fetch off-chain data from APIs and update in-game NFTs in real time. For example, a footballer’s NFT card stats can change when they score in real-world matches.

Automated Rewards Distribution

Gelato Automation ensures instant rewards when milestones are achieved. Players enjoy real-time recognition, elevating satisfaction and transparency.

About Gelato

Join our community and developer discussions on Discord.

Web3 Functions are available today in private beta. Check out the documentation and our tutorial to write, test, and deploy your own Web3 Functions. Apply here to test them early.

If you are new to Gelato

Gelato is web3’s decentralized backend empowering builders to create augmented smart contracts that are automated, gasless, and off-chain aware on all major EVM-compatible blockchains including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, Optimism, zkSync, and more. Over 400+ projects rely on Gelato to power millions of transactions across DeFi, NFT, and Gaming.

Gelato currently offers four services:

• Web3 Functions: Connect smart contracts to off-chain data & computation by running decentralized cloud functions.

• Automate: Reliable, developer-friendly, and decentralized smart contract automation.

• Relay: Robust, scalable gasless transactions via a simple API.

• Gasless Wallet: A powerful SDK combining Gelato Relay with Safe's Smart Contract Wallet, enabling Account Abstraction.

Witness the ongoing journey towards a decentralized future led by Gelato!